Thursday, July 26, 2012

You definitely want to come to my GARAGE SALE.
I just dropped off three huge bags of the LESS interesting stuff at my local charity shop, and they were completely delighted. So you'll be positively ECSTATIC with the MORE interesting stuff!

Anyway, I have moved house, and the new place has less storage space than the old one. Boxes and boxes of sketchbooks, notebooks and collected scraps moved out of the old garage into my new studio room. It felt like being smothered by a huge paper beast. I fought it for five days, first trying to cram everything into shelves, then despairing and wanting to give up my job just so I don't ever produce any more boxes full of paper. After that I started going through it all and throwing away most of it - ripping out one or two useful pages of every old sketchbook and binning the rest. I went up and down in the elevator with boxes full of torn books, and after two days of that, my studio feels like a good place to be at last. And I found a whole lot of interesting stuff hidden in these horrible, looming towers of paper.

An idea for a story I never wrote.

An odd song with a couple of good lines.

I found all the scattered parts of projects I want to concentrate on next - a few novels and a classic picture book text. And I threw away so much scribbling... it was great.

I even found some fan mail that needed replying to. I am quite bad with fan mail, I always want to reply properly and then I don't get around to it for so long that I give up because I assume the writer has moved house or grown up since. But I replied to a whole bunch today.

Anyway, here's my new studio room:

My favourite bit is that I finally got around to replacing the castors on my chair with feet. I HATE ROLLING OFFICE CHAIRS. Mostly because my feet don't quite reach the floor, and so I keep rolling away when I least expect it.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

OK so here is what's happening.
I am doing a garage sale because I'm moving to a smaller place.
And for the first time in a decade I have ACTUALLY sorted through ALL my stuff, so there is loads to be had for somewhere between free and cheap.
This includes old artwork, sketches, paintings, doodles...

This box is FULL by now, I took the picture when I was just starting to go through my old drawings.

I am also going to have loads of copies of my own books there which I will happily sign and personalise for you. (Not just these - there are copies of the cat books as well.)

That's the last lot of stuff I just added to the pile, quite a good sample containing: a painting, some lovely vintage tumblers, a cute Japanese mug in the shape of a cat, a comic book and a huge wicker hamper containing WHO KNOWS WHAT. Multiply that in your mind by 1261276328764238472 and that's pretty much what's in my garage, waiting to be taken away by you.

There's also my CD collection, my vintage kitchen stuff, bags of clothes (size 8 to 10) and shoes (size 4ish), loads of weird objects I collected in charity shops, tins, tools (completely unused power sander, anyone?) art materials, my old desk which is covered in doodles and has a Useful Drawer For Stuff, kites, toys, sock monkeys, socks for making monkeys, assorted electronics, comics, picture books, in short everything you expect from a garage sale (bag of batteries! Might still work!) and then some.

I am planning to open the garage door at 11 and keep it open until maybe 5, or longer in case of nice weather and friends. I'll have cake and tea for visiting friends, and am hoping that some fellow artists will turn up to hang out and draw stuff, play cards, chat, and generally have a lovely Sunday.

So - please come round to Sternhall Lane, Peckham, London, on the 5th of August between 11:00 and 17:00. Look for the open garage. Brink a Ukulele, or some pencils, or a pack of cards, eat cake, drink tea, defend me from scary weirdoes, enjoy lovely East Dulwich/Peckham on a Sunday (it's the place to be!) and >>>>>TAKE AWAY MY STUFF!<<<<

Sunday, July 8, 2012

I had a sudden hankering to try out garage band on the ipad, because it promises that any idiot can make music with it.

So this is a caricature of myself at a rap gig, because I went to one recently and caught myself just standing around like a potato, staring at the pretty lights and the bouncy people talking really fast when everyone else was dancing.